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Why All Entrepreneurs Must Play Starcraft

by Tony Chung on November 9, 2010

Do you play Starcraft? If you have, you’d probably agree that there are strong parallels between strategies used in the game and techniques used to run a business (or even your own life e.g. optimizing your day-to-day expenses and income).

When you get attacked, is your defense strong enough to survive the attack?

Are you optimizing your efficiency?
Do you have sufficient resources?

When playing Starcraft, you must constantly be aware of what is happening all over the map, whether it be your opponents or your partners. In the process of staying aware, you must make sometimes up to 100 decisions per minute to expand efficiently and eventually win. Below are seven mantras that surround these types of decisions and are crucial to success in any Starcraft battle AND in starting/running a business.

Teamwork and Communication. When you are playing on a team with other players, you MUST work together and communicate in order to succeed. Without a mutual strategy and technique, the team will almost surely fail and get destroyed.

Optimize Efficiency. In the game, you must prioritize the way you build and generate troops to optimize the speed by which you create the strongest army. If you are not efficient, you will be destroyed over and over again by someone who is more efficient.

Strategy and Direction. If you just build aimlessly, you will be inefficient and lose. You must have a very clear strategy and direction in order to defeat your opponents. If for instance you have no clear plan to defend your base, your opponent will simply find your weak spot(s) and destroy you.

Knowing Your Competition. You must always observe the type of races you are competing against before starting to build. Each race has its own unique weapons and strategy sets. Without observing your opponents first, you won’t know how to defend against or defeat your opponents.

Having All Bases Covered. In any Starcraft battle, you must have all bases covered. If you plan to attack someone, you must make damn sure that your homebase has sufficient defense to block off any attacks while you are away from home. This ties back to #1 in communication with your team members.

Constantly Gaining Resources. In Starcraft, you constantly have workers called ‘SCVs’ mining gold and gas. Normally, you’ll have around 15 SCVs obtaining resources, and that’s ALL they focus on doing.

Adaption. Depending on the map chosen, there are many variables that affect the strategy by which you should build your troops. For example, variables include the number of entries to your base or whether the resources at your base are infinite or limited.

If you ask me, I think every entrepreneur or business owner should play Starcraft to simulate your business techniques in the game. As you play, you will notice your weaknesses, because they will recur over and over again. Chances are these weaknesses appear in the way you run your business (or your life) as well. Better to find these weaknesses before they wreak havoc in the real world! Hell, enough application of business techniques in Starcraft just might be more efficient then sitting in MBA courses… 😉